Battle of Midway

[Doug Millison]

I've always thought, and have entertained the notion that such  
thinking is vaguely Pynchonesque, considering the ways he sometimes  
connects people across the globe,  of Dad the radioman/gunner in  
perhaps one of the very aircraft that Grandma (her given name was  
Dainty, she was a ball of fire barely 5 feet tall) had worked on back  
in Oklahoma.  Dad had one of those planes shot out from under himself  
and the pilot, they wound up spending enough time in the water (a  
couple of days) to wonder if that was going to be it; I had the chance  
to meet the pilot when we went on family vacation to Chicago the year  
I turned 12.

I saw examples of the various aircraft that my father flew in during  
WWII on a trip to the Smithsonian in May, where I was able to read  
several interesting things related to the 20th Air Group, the Navy  
unit Dad served in, in the exhibit on the aircraft carrier Enterprise,  
from which they flew. I've got his medals here, the previously- 
mentioned DFC, he also received a Navy Air Medal. Coming out of boot  
camp, Dad was in the one of first groups of Navy airmen to train  with  
radar.

Another touch perhaps worthy of Pynchon:  the Intelligence Office in  
the Group was Chauncey Stillman  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauncey_Stillman 
   His family's money originally came from sulfur http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeport-McMoRan 
   I believe I heard that the family was  also  involved with Chemical  
Bank. I never had a chance to meet him, but when I was a toddler  
Stillman brought the 20th Air Group to NYC for a reunion that formed  
the basis for Millison family stories for the rest of my father's  
life.  He and the rest of the men got to stand up in the audience and  
be introduced by Ed Sullivan on TV, among other glories.   I keep  
watching for them on the Ed Sullivan reruns they've got on one of the  
local PBS stations, but haven't caught them yet.